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HISTORIC LIFE LEAVES. 
Quarterly, June, 1912. 





SECRET 

of 



COLUMBUS 




Price, 25c 



Copyright, 1912, by HYLAND C. KIRK. 



The Secret ©f ColiuimlbiiJis 



BY 



HYLAND C KIRK 



// 



"Above all things let writers bear in mind that the first law of 
history is never to dare to say that which is not true; and the second 
never to fear to say that which is true; lest the suspicion of hate or 
favor fall upon their statements." Quoted by Pope Leo XIII from 
Cicero. 



t: / II 



PRESS OF THE 

HAYWORTH PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 



n:i'-u iiiz .: 



©CLA31.010 7 



csl 



THE SECRET OF COLUMBUS. 

Though able critics as Sainte-Beuve, and men of 
affairs like Napoleon, familiar with the makings of 
history, have reached the conclusion that it is but a 
fable which mankind have agreed to believe, it seems 
to be certain that as time goes on the enlightened 
world gets nearer to historic facts and truths. As 
more minds are turned toward these problems, new 
data are discovered, the resolving power of human 
scrutiny increases, and more accurate inferences are 
drawn ; so that as in other fields of inquiry, it is not 
improbable as the world advances the most difficult 
questions of the past may be reasonably explained 

The Riddles of His Birth. 

Various mysteries in the life of Christopher Colum- 
bus have proved so puzzling to his biographers as to 
have been a source of perennial debate almost from 
the time of his demise to the present. His age, his 
birth-place, his lineage and language, his early career, 
his marital relations, certain of his later deeds, and his 
actuating motives throughout life, have all been more 
or less puzzling to the student of history. 

As to the date of his birth, if a statement of Ramusio 
be accepted as true that the application of Columbus 
to the Genoese authorities having been rejected, at the 
age of forty he determined to go to Portugal, he must 
have been born as early as 1430 ; and if what Columbus 
said in 1501 was true, that it was forty years since 



at the age of fourteen he took to the seas, he must have 
entered the world in 1447. Yet Bernaldez, the his- 
torian, in whose house Columbus lived, says that the 
Admiral died in 1506, ''at the age of seventy, a little 
more or less," which Navarrete, Humboldt, Irving and 
other biographers have accepted as correct, thus fixing 
the date of his birth in 1436 ; while Mr. Henry Vignaud 
has written a volume to prove that the real date of his 
birth is 1451. That Columbus purposely misled people 
as to when he was born, for some reason of his own, 
would seem to be true, if we take into account the 
fact as illustrated in a table arranged by Mr. Vignaud, 
that eighteen different periods ranging from 1430 to 
1456, have been assigned by different authorities as 
the date of his birth based upon data largely furnished 
according to the records by the Admiral himself. 

As of the time so of the place. Columbus declared 
in the preliminary instrument intended to establish 
his future noble family, that he was "from Genoa and 
was born there," but Oviedo, writing not many years 
after his death, considers it so very doubtful where the 
great navigator was born that he mentions some six 
Italian towns claiming the honor of his birth ; and this 
number has since been increased to nearly a score, in- 
cluding French, Portugese and Spanish claims, while 
it may be worthy of note that Charles Molloy wrote 
a book in 1682 to prove that Columbus was born in 
England ! 

The visitor to Genoa may see the marble statue of 
Columbus in the Piazza Acquaverde and the house of 
his birth in the little street of de Molcento ; and also 
another house where he was born — discovered by M. 
Stagliero in 1885— in the Carogio Dritto. Each of 



these houses is equally authentic, since each belonged 
to a Domenico Columbo, the accredited father of 
Columbus. 

If one will stop at Cogoleto, on his way to Savona, 
he can see another house, or rather shop bearing the 
date 1650, where Columbus was born. The tourist 
will also find documentary evidence at the town of 
Albissiola, a little farther west, that Columbus was 
born there; and when he reaches Savona may be 
shown documents equally convincing to prove that Co- 
lumbus was born in that city. And so if he goes in 
other directions from Genoa. At Quinto, proof will 
be presented that Columbus was born there, and also 
at Nervi, and at Bogliasco; while equally convincing 
proofs will be furnished at Chiavari, at the castle 
of Cuccaro, at Cosseria, Finale, Novare, Milan and 
Modena that he was born in each of these towns. If 
he takes boat to Calvi, Corsica, the investigator will be 
shown the street where Columbus was born and lived, 
also his statue erected under the auspices of the French 
government sanctioning the claims of the historian 
Peretti, and the Abbe Martin Cassanova de Pioggiola, 
that Columbus was a native of that port. 

Says the Spanish critic Fernando de Anton del Olmet 
in "La Espana Moderna," "In order to determine the 
value of the evidence serving as basis to the claim made 
by Genoa to be the birth-place of the renowned Ad- 
miral, it suffices to know that four cities have dedi- 
cated four marble monuments to their son Christopher 
Columbus ; two possess the register of his baptism, and 
eight or ten present divers title-deeds to consider them- 
selves his cradle, and opinions are not wanting which 
attribute to him a Greek nationality.'' 



8 



The historian Justin Winsor, after a careful exami- 
nation of all the evidences presented by these different 
towns, including Genoa, comes to the conclusion that 
"There is left in favor of any of them, after their 
claims are critically examined, nothing but local pride 
and ambition!" 

If Genoa had been his native city, after learning of 
his great discovery, the event would have been cele- 
brated there it would seem as a matter worthy of local 
rejoicing, and after his return he would have has- 
tened home to receive the congratulations of his friends 
and acquaintances; but, as Harrisse has pointed out, 
he never returned to it again ! 

It is held by certain historical critics that Columbus 
in saying he "came from Genoa and was born there," 
was moved merely to attach himself to an important 
city as a base for the lordly house he sought to estab- 
lish, it being important at that period that men of re- 
nown should be sons of famous cities; and that the 
Admiral had this in mind is argued from the statement 
of his son Fernando in his history that "wise men are 
much more esteemed if they come from great cities," 
and also from the statement as to his father's wishes 
concerning his nativity: "Seeing that God had gifted 
my father with these personal qualities which so well 
fitted him for so great an undertaking, he was himself 
inclined that his country and origin might remain hid- 
den and obscure. Some who would throw a cloud upon 
his fame, have alleged that he was from Nervi, others 
from Cuguero, and others from Bugiesco ; while others 
again, who were disposed rather to exalt his origin, say 
that he was a native of Savona, others of Genoa, and 



some more vain, make him to have been a native of 
Placencia, where there are some honorable persons of 
the name, and several tombs having the arms and in- 
scriptions of the family of Columbus." 

This same Fernando, in answer to the question of 
Bishop Giustiniani, as to where his father was born, 
replied that the fatherland of his father Christopher 
Columbus, was "a secret" which the Admiral did not 
wish to be disclosed. 

But are there no evidences as to the true nativity of 
Columbus? The Genoese historian Antonio Gallo, 
Chancellor of the Bank of St. George at Genoa, wrote 
an article of about a thousand words in length in 1499, 
entitled "The Trip of Columbus over an Ocean pre- 
viously Inaccessible." He had letters of the Admiral 
before him when he wrote it, and he begins in this 
way: "Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, 
brothers, Ligurians in race, sprung from poor parents 
of Genoa." 

Now, one styled a Ligurian was not necessarily a 
Genoese, nor did the latter term as here used indicate 
the birth-place of any one. Not only Gallo, but Gius- 
tiniani, Fulgoso, Geraldino, Andreas Bernaldez, Pedro 
Martir, and other historians, speak of Columbus as a 
Ligurian, several of the others probably deriving their 
information from Gallo; but such a statement as in- 
dicating the place of his birth, would have little more 
value than it would to speak of a person at present as 
Irish, or a Gothamite. Ligurian meant of Spanish 
origin. "The Ligurians," says Henry Harrisse in his 
"Christopher Columbus and the Bank of St. George," 



10 



"were not of Italic origin. They most probably be- 
longed to the Iberian race, which is the substratum of 
the Spanish nation." 

In this particular instance Gallo sets this question 
at riest a little further along when he says: " — but 
Bartholomew, a minor born in Lusitanla." (Sed 
Bartholomaeus minor natu in Lusitania.) Lusitania, 
at that period, included Portugal and the region north 
to the Bay of Biscay ; and if Bartholomew was born in 
Lusitania, Christopher, but a year or two older, was 
doubtless born in the same locality. Giustinani, an- 
other Genoese historian, uses the same words as to the 
birth-place of Bartholomew Columbus, and it may be 
regarded as reliable inasmuch as no one has considered 
it against Bartholomew's interests to have his birth- 
place located where he was actually born ! 

Mr. Vicente Paredes, a Portugese writer, was so 
impressed with this statement of the two Genoese his- 
torians and other considerations, that he sought a few 
years ago to prove in the pages of the Extramaduran 
Review, that Columbus was a Portuguese and native 
of the Province of Extramadura. This was set at rest, 
however, by Mr. Vincentes Barrantes, a native of that 
province and historian, largely because there is no evi- 
dence existent to show that Christopher Columbus, 
though for a number of years a resident of Lisbon, 
and could doubtless speak it, ever made use of the 
Portuguese as a written language. 

At this point we have a crucial test — what language 
did Columbus use? If born of poor parents in Genoa, 
as alleged, he must have used the Italian language, and 
that would have been the only language he could have 



11 



known when he left home at fourteen or fifteen years 
of age as he states to follow the seas. But the indis- 
putable fact is that he never used the Italian language. 
It is alleged that on one occasion at La Rabida, a cer- 
tain friar Juan Perez, ''noticing Columbus refer to a 
foreign land, asked him a question in his own lan- 
guage." But there is no word to show that they en- 
gaged in any conversation, or that Columbus even re- 
plied in a tongue differing from his usual speech. Co- 
lumbus always wrote in the Spanish language; of the 
ninety-seven different pieces of writing by his hand, all 
were written in that tongue ; and in the preamble to 
his diary, referring to the title "Great Khan," he says : 
''Which title in our Eomance tongue means King of 
Kings," — by this undoubtedly meaning in the Spanish 
tongue, as he uses Romance in the sense of Spanish in 
other connections. 

It has been urged, on the statement of Fernando in 
his History that Columbus as a boy passed a year at 
the University of Pavia, where he might have acquired 
the Spanish language. This has several elements of 
improbability; first the "History" represents him as 
attending the University at Pavia to study cosmogony 
and not a foreign language, and Harrisse, the most 
eminent critic in this field, regards the whole narra- 
tive of his university experience of doubtful authen- 
ticity. 

True, Mr. E. Tejera, of Havana, has made inquiry 
as to whether Pedro Martir, Trivigiano, and Geraldino, 
could have taken a Galician for an Italian, and whether 
Oviedo, Las Casas, and Garcia Hernandez, could have 
been "so obtuse as to take a countryman to whom they 



12 

spoke for a foreigner?" But this signifies little, as a 
separate examination of the relations of these several 
writers to Columbus, will show; and besides some of 
them may have been in collusion with Columbus on this 
very question. 

The fact that he wrote and spoke the Spanish lan- 
guage as his mother tongue, and did not use the Italian 
so far as known in any way whatever, makes it quite 
certain that he was born in the same section of Lusi- 
tania where the birth of his brother Bartholomew oc- 
curred, and that must have been at some point in Spain 
north of Portugal. 

It has been remarked as singular that Columbus in 
his first voyage should have preferred to embark in 
the Santa Maria, a freight vessel constructed according 
to Oviedo and others at Pontevedra, in Galicia, rather 
than in the Pinta or Nina, both of which offered better 
sailing qualities and greater advantages for the enter- 
prise. But this is explained if we give credence to 
important discoveries made within the last few years 
in the records of Pontevedra tending to show that 
both the paternal and maternal ancestral families of 
Christopher Columbus resided there for nearly a cen- 
tury, that both Christopher and Bartholomew were 
probably born there, and that this selection of the 
Santa Maria as a flag-ship, rather than either the Pinta 
or Nina built at Palos, was due to childhood attach- 
ment for his native town and quite likely previous as- 
sociation with this same vessel. 

Mr. Celso Garcia de la Riega of Pontevedra, found 
a notarial contract executed in that city July 5, 1487, 
freighting the caraval named "Santa Maria and La 



13 



Galliga" — the names being used indiscriminately ; and 
he also found fifteen other notarial contracts covering 
the period from 1428 to 1528, involving the names of 
Columbus' parents, who very probably resided there 
till the middle of the fifteenth century, when, as Mr. La 
Riega suggests, they emigrated to Italy, **in conse^ 
quence of the bloody disturbances which took place in 
Galicia during the fifteenth century, or for other 
reasons, about the year 1444 to 1450 of the same, avail- 
ing themselves of the active commercial and mara- 
time relations which then existed between the two 
countries." 

To appreciate fully the findings of Mr. La Riega, it 
is necessary to know what the real name of Columbus 
was. As signed to his contract with the sovereigns, 
it was Cristoval Colon, and not Columbus, the latter 
having been adopted by him, as it would appear, from 
its belonging to noted navigators of that name under 
whom he served or for other reasons. It is true that 
at that period especially in Latin countries, individual 
names were changed on the slightest provocation. 
Thus Colon was also written by the same person bear- 
ing that appellation at times as Colom, as well as Co- 
lombo, and these names seem to have been used indis- 
criminately by other members of his family. 

Though Columbus himself never mentions father or 
mother, the critics are fairly well agreed that the 
father's name was Domingo Colon, and the mother's 
Susanna Fontarossa or Fontanarossa, and that besides 
Christoval and Bartholomew, they had younger chil- 
dren, Diego and Blanca. That the mother's name Sus- 
anna Fontarossa, was Jewish throughout, there is no 
doubt, and accordingly her family and ancestors very 



14 

likely possessed Jewish names throughout. Besides 
there were Jews in Spain by the name of Colon or 
Colom, and the father of Columbus may have been one 
of them. Such names appear among others in the no- 
tarial documents found in the city records of Ponte- 
vedra by Mr. La Riega, running back to 1428, as shown 
in the following abstract : 

Date. Instrument. Family Name and Function. 

1428, Nov. 28, Quit-rent deed, Bartolome de Colon, solicitor. 

1434, Jan. 19, Promise to pay, Blanca Colon, creditor. 

1434, Jan. 20, Grant of house, Catalina Columba, grantee. 

1434, Aug. 11, Sale of land, Maria de Colon, wife of seller. 

1434, Sept. 29, Deed of purchase, Domingo de Colon, owner of 

boundary. 

1435, Dec. 25, Appraisement, ' Elvira Columba, wife of owner. 

1436, March 21, Appraisement, Jacob Fonterossa, boundary lessee. 

1437, July 29, Order of payment, Domingo de Colon and Benjamin 

Fonterossa, payees. 
1440, Aug. 4, Quit-rent deed, Maria de Colon, wife of payee. 
1444, Feb. 1, Warrant, Benjamin Fonterossa, tax colifctor. 

1454, No date. Appointment, Jacob Fonterossa, collector. 

1496, Oct. 14, ■ Appraisement, Christobo de Colon, owner of 

boundary. 
1519, Oct. 13, Writ of execution, Juana de Colon and Constanza de 

Colon, heirs of hereditament. 
1525, Nov. 6, Appraisement, Maria Fonterossa, wife of owner. 

1528, June 22, Order of payment, Esteban de Fonterossa, husband of 

debtor. 

Note. — For these Pontevedra records complete, see article "La 
Verdadera Patria de Cristobal Colon," by Fernando de Anton del 
Olmet, in "La Espana Moderna," for June, 1910. 



It is indeed remarkable and difficult to explain that 
in the generation prior to that of Christopher Columbus, 
and in that port where the vessel was built in which 
he first sailed to this continent, situated as it is in that 
part of the world where credible historians assert his 
brother was born, and where the language is spoken, 
and the only living language he is known to have used — 
it is indeed inexplicable that these two family names 
should be found, up to the year 1454, or about the time 
when the parents of Columbus are believed to have emi- 
grated to Italy, in such number and proximity in the 



15 



record, unless Pontevedra was the veritable birth-place 
of Columbus himself ! 

The above documents w^ere all found recorded in the 
Galician dialect, and another one discovered written 
in the Castilian of the time, has also a historic value. 
It consists of an order of payment addressed by the 
Archbishop of Santiago, Sire of Pontevedra, on March 
15, 1413, directing the Council to pay Mr. ''Nicolao 
Oderigo de Janua," 15,000 maravidis, old coin, in three 
sums of money. This shows that the Oderigo family 
as well as that of Colon, resided at Pontevedra; and 
Nicholas Oderigo was the name of the Ambassador 
from Genoa to the Court of the Spanish sovereigns, to 
whom Columbus entrusted his title-deeds and docu- 
ments, ostensibly to be delivered to the City of Genoa ; 
but who carefully kept them himself during his life- 
time, so that they were not delivered to the authorities 
(who then could have readily detected and might have 
exposed the sham as to his birth-place), till two cen- 
turies later by a descendent, Lorenzo Oderigo. 

Several names, which as a boy Columbus is believed 
to have acquired in his Pontevedra home, he applied to 
his discoveries in the New World. Such are San Salva- 
dor, the name of the parish in which the Colon family 
resided, which he used twice; he gave it to the first 
island discovered, and he gave it to the first river which 
he came to in the Island of Juana (Cuba) ; the latter 
name Juana being one which Columbus took from his 
relative Juana de Colon, proprietor of a retreat for 
seamen in said parish adjoining the cove of Portosanto. 
Portosanto, this name of the cove forming the sea 
boundary of this parish, he gave to the fourth island 



16 

he discovered. In his second voyage he named an 
island "The Galician," the surname of his first vessel, 
the Santa Maria, which was built at Pontevedra. In 
his third voyage he named an island Trinadad, a name 
applied to the eirado close to the Tower of Galea, at 
Pontevedra, where in the time of Columbus' childhood, 
boys were accustomed to play. Trinidad was the first 
land he saw on that voyage, and the first promontory 
that he saw, he named Cape la Galea after the Tower, 
as it is believed, at Pontevedra. The President of the 
Archeological Society at Pontevedra, discovered a 
pamphlet of accounts, the property of a society of 
sailors, called the San Miguel Brotherhood, to which 
a certain Alonzo de Colon belonged during the years 
1470 to 1480, and it is notable that Columbus gave the 
name San Miguel, to the most westerly point of the 
Island of Hispaniola. 

*'0n reading the Resolution of the Pontevedra Coun- 
cil," says Mr. Del Olmet, "which on July 29, 1437, orders 
the payment of twenty-four maravidis to Domingo de 
Colon and Benjamin Fonterossa, the reflection arises 
that there is a short distance between both families 
from a business partnership to a marriage. Nothing 
is more logical, and here is the simple way to explain 
the fact that the Admiral had for his parents a Colon 
and a Fonterossa, giving the clue to the mystery of his 
life." 

Doubtless here is a clue to that mystery, which has 
been hinted at by many, but never given the complete 
attention it deserves. It is a clue which explains in 
an adequate way, as no other explanation does, why 
Columbus should never mention anywhere the name of 
either father or mother, or any parental relative, and 



17 

should deliberately state that he was "from Genoa and 
was born there," when as the facts indicate he was 
born in Pontevedra. 

Pontevedra was an important port at that period, 
and as a son of that city, quite as much honor would 
attach to the name of Columbus as if he came from 
Genoa ; and besides, as evinced in some of his letters, 
he had a patriotic and passionate love for Spain. But 
he could not afford to tell the truth, he had a Jewess 
for a mother, and not improbably a father of the same 
race. "Among those who were led to the great Auto- 
de-fe Sit Tarragona, on July 18, 1489," says Dr. Meyer 
Kayserling of Budapest, who has specially examined 
this subject, "clothed in the garb of penitents, were 
Andreas Colom, his wife Blancha, and his mother-in- 
law Francisco Colom. They all confessed that they had 
observed the rites, ceremonies, and holidays of the 
Jews. What must have been the feelings of Chris- 
topher Columbus, or Colom, when he heard that mem- 
bers of the Jewish race bearing his name, had been 
condemned and executed by the Inquisition?" 

For a Hebrew in race, training and inclinations, to 
give to the world his real birth-place and lineage, would 
be to invite his own destruction. Says Mr. La Riega, 
"If the Admiral belonged to this family, doubtless a 
Hebrew one, and this deduction may be made from 
its biblical names, or at least of new Christians, should 
we not excuse and declare him to be fully justified in 
his resolution not to reveal such data, in view of the 
hatred toward that race which existed at the time, 
and the rage vented against it in the second half of 
the fifteenth century?" (See Note 1.) 



18 

His Books and Associates. 

If a man is justified in trying to benefit the world 
at the risk of his own life, then Columbus certainly 
was justified in trying to prevent the world from know- 
ing that he belonged to and sympathized with this per- 
secuted race. For that he was a Jew at heart, if not 
wholly so in lineage, is clearly shown from the books 
he was accustomed to read ; from the character of those 
with whom he associated, and who made it possible for 
him to make his discoveries; from his own literary 
style which has often been noted as akin to that of the 
Hebrew prophets; and finally from the strange de- 
lusion, seldom if ever correctly interpreted, which came 
to possess him in his declining days, that he was the 
discoverer of Paradise and forerunner of the end of 
the world, or in other words the Jewish Messiah ! 

The books Columbus is known to have read to some 
extent, several of them bearing his annotations, in- 
cluded : 

^neus Sylvius' "Historia rerum Ubique Gestarum/^ 

Raymond Lulli's ''Arte de Navegar." 

Pierre d'Ailly's "Imago Mundi," taken largely from 
Roger Bacon, and already translated into Hebrew, and 
from which he derived his knowledge of Aristotle, 
Strabo, Seneca, and other classics. 

Abraham Ibn Esra's "Critical Days." 

Jamblichus' "Egyptian Mysteries." 

Samuel Ibn Abbas' "Messiah." 



19 

The Bible, and especially the books of Isaiah and 
other prophets. 

According to the assertion of Columbus, it was 
his own interpretation of a passage in Isaiah (be- 
lieved to have been Chap. LXV., 17), which impelled 
him to his discoveries. 

His signature on the first leaf of a copy of Ptolemy 
of 1478, probably written before his first voyage, tends 
to show that his "delusion" was of a deliberate char- 
atcer and based upon ideas long cherished. This book 
is now in the library of General de San Roman of 
Madrid, and the signature accompanied by the mys- 
terious initial letters (his seal) , and a verse from one 
of the Psalms, would tend to indicate a relation between 
these letters and Jewish doctrine : 

S 
S A S 
X M Y 

Xpo — ferens 

"I will declare the decree; the Lord hath said unto 
me. Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." 

His earliest Jewish associate was unquestionably his 
mother, and that his father's influence, if not a Jew 
himself, in no wise opposed that of the mother, is 
inferable from one of the earliest records concerning 
those parents by one who admittedly had facilities for 
knowing them ; and that is the statement inserted in 
the "Psalterium Octuplex" of 1516 by Bishop Gius- 
tinani of Genoa, that Columbus was "vilibus ortus 
parentibus"— born of vile parents. 



20 



Now it is not necessary to suppose that the Colon 
parents were "vile" or even very poor, in order to ac- 
count for the language of the Bishop, it being quite 
sufficient for him to apply such terms in that part of 
the world at that time, to know that they did not be- 
long to his church or to any church, or if he suspected 
or discovered that they were Jews. 



According to Dr. Kayserling, Columbus associated 
with Jews largely after he went to Lisbon, about 1472. 
Martin Behaim was one of these, nearly his own age. 
Another was Joseph Vecinho, mathematician and royal 
physician, who prepared a translation of Zacuto's 
Astronomical Tables and gave it to Columbus, who 
carried it with him on his travels. Oviedo says that 
Columbus "in the city of Lisbon, as a grateful son 
helped his aged father" ("de la civdad de Lisbona, 
como hijo grato, socorria a su padre viejo"). Oviedo 
personally knew the Admiral and seems to have re- 
corded this as a matter of observation, or imparted 
by some resident, as though the father of Columbus 
lived in that city. In a codicil to his will made August 
25, 1505, the Admiral directs that a certain Jew who 
dwelt near the Jewry Gate, Lisbon, whose name he 
does not mention, be paid a certain sum of money. 
Though the said Jew had long before departed from 
that Gate ,it is quite possible that the person referred 
to thus indefinitely was his own father; as his family 
were long-lived. Fernando in writing his history and 
trying to trace the lineage of his father, met with two 
brothers named Columbus, both over one hundred years 
of age ; but who could tell him nothing. 



21 



It was Luis de la Cerda, the first Duke of Medina- 
Celi — whose grandmother was a Jewess — one of the 
richest Princes of Andalusia, who hospitably received 
Columbus after he left Portugal, entertained him for 
a long period (some accounts say two years), and 
would have financed his expedition if royal consent 
could have been obtained. Later he gave Columbus 
letters of introduction to the Queen, and to Alonzo de 
Quintanilla, the chief supervisor of finance. Diego de 
Deza, a Jewish theologian, and the same Abraham Za- 
cuto, author of the 'Tables," a Jewish astrologer, 
championed the cause of Columbus. Other Hebrew 
friends of his were Abraham Senior and Isaac Abra- 
vanal of Malaga; and the men who finally interposed 
in his behalf, when he had almost lost hope, were Juan 
Cabrero, Luis de Santangel, Gabrel Sanchez, and Al- 
fonso de la Caballeria, all of Jewish extraction. Kay- 
serling, p. 59. 

It is of great interest in this connection to know 
that Luis de Santangel, the King's escribano de racion, 
actually advanced the money which enabled Columbus 
to equip his fleet for the first voyage of discovery. 
True, the port of Palos which lay at the mercy of the 
Crown for defaults in dues, was ordered to furnish 
two armed vessels for royal service during one year, 
and the Pinzon brothers, Martin Alonzo and Vincente 
Yanez, both agreed to furnish one vessel each. But 
the Santa Maria, an old caraval, had to be refitted, and 
the crew, despite the fact that they were many of 
them banished Jews, Moors, and pardoned convicts, 
resolved not to go unless paid four months in advance, 
besides the expenses of supplies, weapons, and other 
equipments. Neither Ferdinand nor Isabella, nor their 
united kingdoms, had enough money at this juncture 



22 

to equip a fleet; and that Santangel furnished the 
funds, is proven by the entries in the original account 
books found in the archives at Simancas. Several of 
Santangel's relatives had been burned at the stake for 
not renouncing their religion; and Gabrel Sanchez' 
father Pedro, was burned in effigy at Saragossa in 
1493, he having escaped from the country, v^hile 
Gabrel's brother and sister both died at the stake as 
Jewish heretics. 

Santangel and other Jews had detected the true char- 
acter of Ferdinand, and became Maranos to save their 
own lives and fortunes. They knew his feelings to- 
ward the Court of Rome (Pope Julian 2d), which may 
be inferred from a passage in a letter Ferdinand wrote 
to his own Viceroy Count Ribagorza, concerning an 
excommunication the Pope's legate had carried into 
the Kingdom of Naples ; ''Why," he says, "did you not 
comply with our wishes and strangle the legate who 
presented the brief to you?" and in another passage: 
"We are positively determined should his Holiness re- 
fuse to revoke the brief, as well as the acts performed 
by its authority, to deprive him of the obedience now 
paid him by the realms of Castile and Arragon !" The 
Maranos could appeal to Ferdinand because he not 
only owed his marriage with Isabella to Hebrew man- 
agement, but had Jewish blood in his own veins, 
through his great grandmother Paloma, a beautiful 
Jewess of Toledo, whose grandchild, Juana Enriquez, 
daughter of Fadique Enrique, became the second wife 
of King Juan and mother of Ferdinand. These Ma- 
ranos rightly discerned that Ferdinand in furthering 
the Inquisition, cared nothing for the interests of the 
church, but was merely intent on securing the wealth 
of the Jews through their burning and banishment. 



23 

Columbus was made wise to this characteristic, and so 
his strong plea to the sovereigns is the amount of gold 
he will secure in the Indias, not forgetting to put in a 
plea for rescuing the Holy Sepulchre by means of it, 
which might seem to appeal entirely to Christians, but 
was of vastly more interest to Jews. 

The exodus of Jews from Spain, previously ordered 
March 1, actually began August 2, 1492, and the next 
day, August 3, the fleet of Columbus set sail, so the 
liklihood of there having been many Jews among the 
! men is very great. The three ships carried one hun- 

dred and twenty persons, ninety of them being sailors, 
including Jews, Moors, Irish and Spanish. Among 
the civilians were Alonzo de la Calle, and Rodrigo San- 
chez, both of Jewish lineage; an interpreter, Luis de 
I Torres, a converted Jew who was baptized shortly be- 

• fore sailing; a physician, Maestre Bernal, and a sur- 

; geon, Marco, both of that sect or blood, the latter hav- 

I ing become a convert in October, 1490, at Valencia, 

I after witnessing the burning of Adret and Isabel his 

wife as Jewish heretics. These five Jews at least are 
known to have been in that fleet, but no priest of any 
I denomination which is quite remarkable if Columbus 

was really the devout Christian he is represented to 
have been. 



His Christian Professions. 

It is asserted that from the outset Columbus gave 
the newly discovered lands a decidedly religious or 
ecclesiastical coloring. But an examination shows that 
nothing he did was more than one of his craftiness 



^24 

would b-e likely to do, desirous of gaining favor with 
his supporters, the Sovereigns and the Pope. 

In his first voyage he had no priest, and his own acts 
of devotion, if he engaged in any, are doubtless greatly 
colored and magnified for his own purposes as well as 
for those of the Church, writing of the Nev/ World, 
having been early forbidden to all except ecclesiasts. 
An almost exclusive Christian significance has been 
given to the first landing and the imposing ceremonies 
which are represented as having occurred October 12, 
1492; but it was "hosanna rabbah,"* a day on which 
the Jews recite many prayers beginning with the word 
"hosanna," and if we will take into account the trials 
and discomforts of one hundred and twenty men 
crowded for seventy days into three little vessels — 
two without decks^ — tossing about on the waves or 
blistering in the sun, considering the makeup of the 
crews, we may well suspect that Jewish and Moorish 
devotions when they landed were quite as ardent and 
imposing in the aggregate as were those of the fol- 
lowers of the cross. 

The Pope commissioned Father Boyle (Bernardo 
Buil) , a Benedictine monk of Catalonia, to accompany 
Columbus on his second voyage, who was authorized 
to take as companions eleven brothers of that order, 
Boyle being constituted apostolic Vicar and head of 
the Church in the western lands. But did Columbus 
show him the homage due from a faithful Christian 
to his spiritual head ? 

The Admiral would brook no dictation from ,or in- 
terference on the part of, the Bishop ; and among other 
things that happened, the latter accused him of cruelty 

*Kayserling. 



25 

toward the natives and his own men, which accusation 
Columbus seems to have regarded with indifference. 
The Bishop was so indignant that he excommunicated 
him, excluding Columbus from all the privileges of the 
Church and from Christian society. A devout Catholic 
would have gone on his knees at this and begged for 
mercy; but what did the great navigator do? He cut 
off the supplies of the Bishop and of his associate 
priests and followers! As Spotorno tells us, ^'Father 
Boyle was forced to take his departure the first oppor- 
tunity, carrying with him heavy complaints against 
the justice of the Admiral." His Reverence with Don 
Pedro Margarite and several Spanish nobles, returned 
to Spain in the ships which brought out Bartholomew 
Columbus. 

Was it any wonder then that Columbus on his re- 
turn from that voyage should on landing at Cadiz, 
have felt constrained to do what he could to curry 
favor with the Church — even to putting on the robe 
and girdle of the Franciscans, leaving his face un- 
shaven and parading the streets with a sad expression 
of countenance? 

That his avarice, a characteristic ascribed to many 
Hebrews, was superior to any regard for New Chris- 
tians, was shown in his appropriating the 10,000 mara- 
vidis, offered by the King to the man who first dis- 
covered land, on the ground that he himself had seen 
a light the night before. This man, Rodrigo de Triana, 
who, the Admiral himself says, was the first to actu- 
ally see the land, according to Oviedo, on his return 
went to Africa and renounced the Christian faith. C'Se 
passo en Africa y renego la fe.") 



26 

Usually on his guard, that Columbus would not hesi- 
tate to express himself forcibly toward a Christianized 
Jew, an especially faithful one, was shown just prior 
to his departure on his third voyage, when Ximeno 
a Marano of Briviesca, secretary for Fonseca, Super- 
intendent of Indian Affairs, dared to remonstrate with 
Columbus, when the Admiral knocked him down and 
kicked him very vigorously ; thus incurring the enmity 
of both Ximeno and Fonseco ever after. That he might 
on occasion treat a Spanish Christian similarly, or 
worse, is illustratel in the case of Moxica caught fight- 
ing for his friend Guevara desirous of marrying an 
Indian girl against the wishes of the Admiral. Colum- 
bus is said to have executed Moxica with his own hand ; 
as Munoz relates of Moxica, while confessing to a 
priest prior to being executed — "confessing, delaying, 
and then beginning again, accused Columbus of having 
caused the troubles, whereupon he, indignant at his 
boldness, hurled him from the battlements." Historia 
del Nuevo Mundo, libro VI, p. 338. 

As to Christians, Columbus also wrote on Friday, 
June 7, 1499 : ''Being forsaken by all the world, the 
Indians and rebel Christians fell upon me, and I was 
reduced to such distress, that leaving all behind me to 
avoid death, I put to sea in a little caraval. But our 
Lord presently relieved me, saying. Thou man of little 
faith, fear not, I am with you.' And so he dispersed 
my enemies, showing how he could fulfill his promises." 



27 

But he was usually very circumspect in his bearing 
toward the persons and writings of Christians, though 
it is noticeable that he rarely speaks of Jesus unless 
addressing the Sovereigns or the Pope, when he says 
our Lord, he means Jehovah. We have, it is true, elab- 
orate death-bed scenes and descriptions of Christian 
ceremonies at his demise ; but who knows anything of 
the death of Columbus, save what the historians tell 
us, that after he had been dead twenty-seven days, in 
a public document was the brief announcement : 'The 
said Admiral is dead" ; a local chronicle of Valladolid 
not even mentioning his death during the year 1506! 

Columbus often wore the Franciscan garb, it was 
cheap and easily procurable, and in his stages of pov- 
erty perhaps all he could afford; Oviedo says that 
Quintanilla was moved with pity when he first saw 
Columbus, and alluded to his miserable garments. Cer- 
tain secular societies allied with the woolen interests 
were accustomed to wear a dress of this kind, and some 
of them as the Beguines, are reported to have taken 
the third vow of that order. But had he been a full- 
fledged Franciscan, it would not invalidate the evi- 
dence supporting his Jewish predilection ; since many 
Maranos entered the priestly orders to save themselves, 
as Milman says : "Cloisters of monks and nuns, were 
full of Jews ; these were canons, bishops. Inquisitors, 
not only of Jewish descent, but in heart Jews," and 
many so-called spiritual Franciscans suffered death at 
the stake.* 

♦History of the Jews, Vol. HI, PP- 327-8. 



28 



But passing such ordinary actions as his donning 
the Franciscan garb, it may be asked how the char- 
acter of Columbus comports with his assertions of loy- 
alty to the Church as addressed to the Sovereigns and 
the Pope? The answer is that it comports perfectly 
if one will observe all the facts. We must bear in mind 
that in Spain at that period, every Jew had to be a 
liar and a trickster in order to preserve his own life; 
that Columbus, according to his own testimony and 
that of others, was an adept in deception; that he 
entered upon such a course fearlessly, having been a 
pirate and slave-trader — occupations common to sailors 
of the period — before he began seriously to consider 
questions of faith ; and finally, that in every one of his 
Christian professions may be discerned his Jewish 
leaning. 

Thus he urges upon the Sovereigns and the Pope, 
the importance of regaining the Holy Land, by means 
of the wealth which he himself is to secure in the 
Indias. This becomes a fixed idea with him, especially 
the part he thinks himself destined by holy decrees as 
set forth in Old Testament prophecy to enact. He 
wrote in his Diary December 26, 1492. "And before 
three years the conquest of the Holy Land and of 
Jerusalem can be undertaken; for I so promised it to 
your Highness, that all the profits of this my under- 
taking should be spent in the conquest of Jerusalem" ; 
and in his letter addressed to Pope Alexander VI, he 
promises to maintain for the conquest of and liberation 



29 

of the Holy Sepulchre, during six years, 50,000 in- 
fantry and 5,000 horse, and an equal number for the 
succeeding five years. 

According to his plan, "investments were to be made 
from time to time in the Bank of St. George at Genoa, 
to accumulate against the opportune moment when 
the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre seemed feasible, 
either to help to that end any state expedition or to 
fit out a private one." And in this he made his own 
motive appear to be that of the Church, and by means 
of the Church sought to compel his heirs to follow out 
his plan. ''He enjoined upon his heirs," says Winsor, 
"a constant unswerving devotion to the Papal Church 
and to the Spanish Crown. At every season of con- 
fession, his representative was commanded to lay open 
his heart to the confessor who must be prompted by a 
perusal of the will to ask crucial questions." 

In his book of ''Prophecies" Columbus wrote : "The 
conquest of the Holy Sepulchre is the more urgent, 
when everything foretells, according to the very exact 
calculations' of Cardinal d'Ailly, the speedy conversion 
of all the sects, the arrival of Antichrist, and the de- 
struction of the world." Of this work: "Libro de las 
Proficias," Harrisse has said : "It is in this deplorable 
lubrication, which we sincerely hope will never be pub- 
lished in full, that Columbus continually invokes the 
Bible and the Prophets, claiming to owe all he knew 



30 



and all he had accomplished to inspiration from on 
high — having been chosen by the Almighty to discover 
the New World before the whole earth came to an end, 
which momentous event was certainly to take place 
within the next fifty years." Notes, p. 156. 

The doctrine of Antichrist, as Bousset has shown, 
was of Jewish origin, and held secretly by them as well 
as by Christians, such secrecy being referred to by 
ancient as well as modern writers. Thus Hippolytus 
says : "This, beloved, I communicate to thee with fear. 
For if the blessed prophets before us, although they 
knew it, were unwilling openly to proclaim it in order 
not to prepare any perplexity for the souls of men, but 
imparted it secretly in parables and enigmas, saying 
'whoso readeth let him understand,' how much more 
danger do we run if we openly utter what was couched 
by them in covert language." (Chap. XXIX.) 

And Bousset says: The secret teaching concerning 
Antichrist was still in the time of S. Martin passed on 
from mouth to mouth." (Antichrist Legend, p. 31.) 

In the Jewish doctrine derived from the prophecy of 
Daniel and other sources, a mighty ruler is to appear 
whose essence shall be enmity to God. And it must be 
remembered that Jesus, the Christ, as the term 
Anointed One means, corresponding to the Hebrew 
Messiah, was not the Messiah of the Jews; but that 
from their point of view, the whole Christian move- 



h 



31 

ment was Antichrist, of which the Pope as the official 
head was the central figure. The Jews were accused 
of a crime tending to make them odious in the sight 
of all men, as murderers of the Son of God, an accusa- 
tion which they did not understand, and which took 
them a long time to comprehend ; since their own rec- 
ords did not afford the details of such an event. It is 
a dreadful thing to be accused of an ordinary murder, 
the details of which one can understand, and if inno- 
cent, be prepared to rebut ; but this charge was as ex- 
traordinary as it was obscure to the defendants, cal- 
culated as it was to turn the faces of many millions of 
people sternly toward a few million others who were 
abashed and disconcerted by the charge. 



As fast as their learned men came into a full knowl- 
edge of the facts on which this accusation was based, 
• they promptly denied it, and asserted that it could not 

have occurred as represented, which they are doing 
even to this day. Notice the words of Dr. Max Nordau 
in the Paris Siecle. After stating it as not his purpose 
to determine whether Jesus is a historical character, or 
only a mythical synthesis of several persons, or em- 
bodiment of the thoughts and feelings of that age in 
which tradition has placed his life, he says: "Jesus 
would never have been condemned to death on the 
cross by a Jewish tribunal, as this method of punish- 
ing criminals was not allowed by the Jewish law ; and 
it never could have occurred on a Friday, the evening 
before the Passover, as the law strictly forbade any 



32 



executions on that day. If the Jews had condemned 
Jesus after the manner reported by tradition, then they 
would have committed a series of crimes, each of which 
would have been severely punished by the Jewish law. 
It is accordingly certain that the whole story of the 
trial of Jesus, can be nothing but an act of vengeance 
intended to punish the Jews for not having recognized 
the divine mission of Christ." And such were the 
views of the intelligent Hebrews in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, while the vast majority clung implicitly to the 
ancient faith which the horrible persecutions they were 
subjected to, served to accentuate. The Maranos or 
converted Jews, took on but little of the Christian 
spirit, while many harbored profound hatred toward 
Rome for her cruelties ; yet the true feelings of all had 
to be veiled or suppressed. 

His Messiahship. 

The appalling misery that beset the poor Spanish 
Jews throughout the fifteenth century, swayed by the 
speculation that the advent of the Messiah would be 
preceded by terrible misfortunes to Israel, led to a 
number of different Hebrew claimants being hailed as 
the Messiah. Judah Abarbanal (1437-1509), regarded 
the Messianic belief as a cardinal principle of Judaism. 
He calculated the date of his arrival as 5263 A. M., or 
1503 A. D., and proved it by many quotations from the 
Old Testament. Nearly all Jewish thought was di- 
rected that way. Moses Botarel, of Cisneros, in Cas- 



33 



tile, declared that he had been annointed by Elijah the 
prophet, and a philosopher, Hasdai Crescans, pro- 
claimed his belief in Botarel's Messiaship ; though only 
a few years earlier. Rabbi Nissim ben Reuben, of Bar- 
celona, a devout Talmudist, had found it necessary to 
protest against a general belief among the Jews of 
Castile, that Samuel Abulafia, the favorite of the King 
Don Pedro, and the chief contributor to the erection of 
the magnificent synagogue in Toledo, was the Messiah 
(Greenstone's Messiah Idea, pp. 184-5). The follow- 
ing of Abulafia was quite in accord with the Jewish 
idea that some great work in behalf of the people 
would mark the beginning of the Messiaship. 

During the previous century and up to this time 
treatises on the subject, such as the "Zohar" of Rabbi 
Simeon Ben Johai, had not only predicted that the pre- 
ceding period would "be one of terrible misfortunes to 
Israel,'* but also the idea that "the King Messiah will 
be aroused to proceed from Paradise!" Columbus as 
a hardy young sailor engaged in all sorts of expedi- 
tions — as he says, having been to the Grecian Archi- 
pelago, to Guinea, to the Canaries, to England and Ice- 
land, "wherever ship had sailed," had little thought of 
religion; but he could not be obtuse to his inherited 
bent, or to passing events, and after his great project 
was conceived — which we may well believe as he states 
came from reading Isaiah — he had long spells of wait- 
ing, both in Portugal and Spain, wherein his Hebrew 



34 



training, his books and associates had their effect. His 
ambition was aroused in various ways; one of these 
was to discover the original Paradise of his race, by 
which he thought the Jews would regain their proper 
status. 

Nor after the announcement of his success was he 
wanting in followers, there were many learned and 
pious Jews and Maranos who believed in Columbus, 
and with reason. ''The discovery of America," says 
Herbert B. Adams, "has been called the greatest event 
in secular history. This dictum may shock the ancients 
and startle the moderns ; but let the mind of reflecting 
students range at will, through the centuries, back and 
forth in the galleries of human achievement, and de- 
termine if you can what single secular deed even ap- 
proximates in grandeur and far-reaching historic sig- 
nificance to the finding of a new world on this earth, 
with which planet alone, history is concerned." The 
performance of this great deed, involving as he be- 
lieved the discovery of Paradise and the recovery of 
the Holy Land, not only in his own mind, but in the 
minds of many others, indicated Columbus as the true 
Messiah, ordained by Jehovah himself from whom all 
Israelite kingship is derived, and who from his palace 
in Zion legitimizes all earthly representatives. 

Mossen Jayme Ferrer, a noted Marano lapidary, 
traveller and author, did not hesitate to address a care- 
fully worded letter to Isabella, in which he says: "I 



35 

believe that in its deep mysterious designs divine 
Providence selected him as an agent in this work, which 
I look upon as the introduction and preparation for 
things which the same divine Providence has deter- 
mined to make known for its own glory and the salva- 
tion and happiness of the world." 

Subsequently at the command of the sovereigns he 
wrote to Columbus: 

"The office which you hold, Senor, places you in the 
light of an apostle and an ambassador of God, sent by 
his divine judgment, to make known his holy name in 
unknown lands." 

That Columbus sought to have the true character of 
his divine mission as he conceived it, recognized by all, 
even by Christians, seems probable; but he was too 
wise to make any claims or demonstrations openly to 
that effect, till he had secured the great wealth, and 
consequent power and authority, he was expecting to 
secure in his fourth voyage from the mines of King 
Solomon. 

In 1502, Asher Lamlein, a German Jew, declared 
himself the forerunner of the Messiah, and not long 
afterwards David Reubeni put forth his Messianic 
claim ; and the same thing was done secretly among the 
Jews by Diogo Pires, under the name of Solomon Mol- 
cho. But when Molcho attempted to announce it 



36 



openly, he was seized by the Inquisition and burnt at 
Mantua in 1532. Columbus was too wise to be caught 
in this way. 

In his letter to their Majesties concerning his third 
voyage he expresses the conviction that the earth is 
not globular but pear-shaped, and from the view of the 
ancients that Paradise must be at the highest point 
of the world, on the part corresponding to the stalk, 
he decided that the original earthly Paradise was lo- 
cated: ''Whither," he says, "no one can go but by 
divine permission." That he believed himself to have 
such permission, is inferable from a statement follow- 
ing: 'There are great indications of this being the 
terrestrial Paradise, for its site coincides with the 
opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have 
mentioned." Now, it does not matter that he was re- 
ferring to the promontory beyond the Dragon's Mouth 
and land surrounding the inner bay of the Gulf of 
Paria, which later voyagers have styled, "a nasty place 
full of vultures, the ground as well as the air full of 
loathsome creatures, vermin of all kinds, tarantulas, 
scorpions, centipedes, lizards, vampires, and 'jiggers' " 
(Curtis, p. 226) ; it is sufficient that it shows the trend 
of the "delusion" in the mind of Columbus. 

It is to be doubted whether this mental state was of 
a character to place him as Lombroso and some other 
alienists have held in the class of paranoiacs. Emer- 
son has pointed out that a certain tendency to insanity 



37 



has always attended the opening of the religious sense 
in man, as if the subjects were unduly affected by an 
excess of light. 'The trances of Socrates, the 'union' 
of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of 
Paul, the aurora of Bohme, the convulsions of George 
Fox and his Quakers, the illumination of Swedenborg, 
are of this kind" ; and Columbus would seem to belong 
in the same list. The historian Peter Martyr, styled 
his assertions about the land of Paradise, as "dis- 
jointed effusions of an overwrought mind," and Hum- 
boldt called them "the reflex of a false erudition," but 
even so, they are clearly attributable to his observance 
of the abject condition of his race, which he conceived 
himself as the special instrument of the Almighty to 
ameliorate. There is evidence that long before the 
beginnings of this alleged "mania," which historians 
say began to distinctly show itself as early as 1498, 
he had the same view and same general purpose, evi- 
dently proceeding from the natural trend of his 
thought. Later, especially after he was placed in 
irons, the importance of his discovery dawning upon 
the world and increasing in his own mind, forced him 
to regard himself as the real discoverer of Paradise 
and Savior of his race. In his letter to the Sovereigns 
he had written: "Here, I believe in my soul that the 
Earthly Paradise is situated" ; and in his letter to the 
nurse of Prince Juan, he wrote : "After all, that most 
prudent King David was first a shepherd, and was 
afterwards chosen King of Jerusalem; and I am a 



38 

servant to the same Lord who raised him to so great 
a dignity/' 

What could the following account of his vision when 
anchored off the river Batlen, Veragua, mean if not 
that he believed himself the direct agent of the Al- 
mighty similar to Moses and David, when as he asserts 
a divine voice cried out to him : 

**0 fool ! is it late for thee to believe in and to serve 
thy God? God of all? What more did he do for Moses 
or for David, his servant? From the time of thy birth 
he has ever had a great care over thee. When he saw 
that thou hadst arrived at the age which seemed meet 
to him he wondrously made thy name resound through- 
out the world. Fear not! All these tribulations re- 
main written upon marble and not without cause." 

And in his letter to Donna Giovanna della Torre, 
after disembarking in chains at Cadiz, he declares him- 
self to be such a messenger : "From the new heavens 
and earth which were prophecied of, first by Isaiah, 
and then by St. John in the Apocalypse, our Lord made 
me a messenger, pointing out to me where they stood." 

By "our Lord" he means Jehovah, and the Apo- 
calypse it must be remembered, is merely extended 
Jewish thought. Gunkel in his "Creation and Chaos" 
(Schopfung and Chaos), has shown that the apoca- 
lyptic writers of the New Testament Revelations, 
merely took up a chain of traditions of ancient He- 



39 

brew origin, a conclusion with which W. Bousset and 
A. H. Keane in their study of the Antichrist Legend, 
agree ; so that in this Columbus was exactly Jewish in 
his claim. 

''The Prophecy." 

But if all other considerations were put aside an 
analysis of his "Prophecy" alone, must prove beyond 
any reasonable doubt, that he conceived himself to be 
the Jewish Messiah, or Christ, an open proclamation 
of which he was only prevented from making by the 
rigid religious censorship of the times. 

And in this he is not the messenger of Jesus, but of 
Jehovah, as he appropriates and makes to apply to 
himself the same prophetic writings interpreted by 
Christians as referring to Jesus, and he is careful to 
show in the outset and in various places the double 
sense in which the Christian doctrine, he felt com- 
pelled to refer to in addressing the Sovereigns, is to be 
taken; the matter preliminary to the letter possibly 
having been prefixed at a later period with a view of 
instructing the general public. 

No one has ever accused Jesus of trying to locate the 
mines of King Solomon to then appropriate their con- 
tents, as a ground for his Messiahship; though his 
claim to that rank Christians believe to be supported 
by various passages in the Hebrew prophets and the 
Psalms, several of which Columbus cites as apparently 



40 



supporting his own personal claims to be the "only 
begotten," the discoverer of the wealth of Ophir by 
which he should secure Palestine from the Gentiles, 
thus conceiving himself as the Christ or Savior of 
his race. 

The following passages : Genesis, XXVIII, 14, XLIX, 
10; Deuteronomy, XVIII, 18; Psalms II, XXII, XLIX, 
CX; Isaiah, II, 1-5, IX, 1-7, XI, 1-9, XXXII, 1-2, 
XXXV, XL, 1-5, XLII, 1-4, XLIX, 5-6, LII, 13-15, 
LIII, LV, 1-4; Jeremiah, XXIII, 6; Daniel, VII, 13, 14, 
28, IX, 24-27; Joel II, 28-32; Micah IV, 1-4, V, 2; Hag- 
gai, II, 7; Zachariah, IX, 9, XI, 12, 13, XIII, 6, 7; 
Malachi, III, 1-3, IV, 5, 6 — all are regarded by the great 
majority of Christians as referring to Jesus, the 
Anointed One, Messiah, or Christ, and a number of 
these passages, besides many others, Columbus cites 
in support of his own claims! (See Note 2.) 

It is perfectly plain that if these prophetic utter- 
ances applied to Jesus, they certainly did not apply to 
Columbus, a circumstance that must have been clearly 
apparent to the Admiral's mind ; and there is another 
fact quite as suggestive in this connection. 

When Jesus accepted the appellation of "Christ" 
(Matthew XVI, 20, XXVI, 63-4; Mark VIII, 29, XIV, 
61-2 ; Luke III, 15, IX, 20-1, XXII, 67-70 ; John I, 41, 
VI, 69), he claimed to be the Messiah of Daniel's 
prophecy (Daniel VII, 13, 14, 27; IX, 24-27), and it 



41 

is this "Prophecy" apparently which Columbus makes 
the title to his book, inasmuch as according to his own 
conception, he is the one referred to in the words of 
Daniel IX, 25, ''to restore and to build Jerusalem!" 

Thus the very title to this unique work, when under- 
stood, is the strongest sort of evidence of his Jewish 
origin and sentiment. 

It is true the reader unless he observes this general 
purpose and falls upon the key to the Admiral's mean- 
ing, is more than likely to regard the work as unques- 
tionably Christian. Did it not appear so Columbus 
might have perished at the stake; and a careful study 
of it discloses that all the Christian pretences are a 
mere gloss to evade the keen-eyed scrutiny of the Holy 
Office! 



Although this work, written in old Spanish and 
Latin, which now covers some eighty-six large folio 
pages and has more than one hundred titular division 
heads has never been translated in full, and there are 
very few copies to be found anywhere in the world, it 
is more than likely that Jewish readers long ago have 
discerned and understood its meaning; but as there 
was no confirmation of Jewish doctrine in the claim 
of Columbus, and many difficulties likely to arise, they 
have allowed the matter to rest. (See Note 3.) 



42 



And could Catholic critics have failed to observe the 
meaning? It would seem not, unless it has happened 
with all as in the cases of several who refer to defec- 
tive copies. Rev. A. G. Knight, the Jesuit biographer, 
says : '*In his too plentiful leisure moments he fed his 
enthusiasm upon the prophecies of Holy Writ, and com- 
posed a treatise, of which the rough or mutilated sketch 
(or caricature) , alone preserved till now, can give no 
real idea." (Christopher Columbus, p. 184.) 

Mr. George Barton states on page 78 of "Columbus 
the Catholic" that only "fourteen of these pages are 
still preserved, but they are evidently taken from th«e 
first sketch or draft, in which the Admiral was evi- 
dently setting down as he came to them the witnesses 
and authorities in his favor, as preparatory material 
for the work he intended; for the passages collected 
and the authorities cited have no connection or co- 
ordination with each other." Roselly de Lorgues, as 
translated by Dr. J. J. Barry, dissenting from the opin- 
ion of Humboldt as to the "Prof ecias," inquires : "Is it 
permissible to judge soundly of a work from the frag- 
ments of a sketch, or a rough draft abridged by a muti- 
lation of fourteen pages?" (Christopher Columbus, 
p. 428.) 

Whether as we now have it the work is but fourteen 
pages of the original, or has lost fourteen pages of the 
original, it is sufficiently connected to show a sig- 
nificant purpose; and De Lorgues, who seems to 



43 

have caught an inkling of the meaning, makes this 
admission. 

"Notwithstanding the number of his enemies, who 
watched every opportunity to ruin him, and the vigil- 
ance of the Inquisition, then so watchful to repress 
every expression in the least doubtful as regarded 
Catholic orthodoxy, Columbus writes without guile that 
the Most Holy Trinity inspired him with the first idea 
of his enterprise; that it was the Redeemer, that is to 
say, the word made flesh, who indicated to him the 
route; that our Lord showing himself propitious to 
his desire, had acceded to him the spirit of understand- 
ing, and that he had afterwards opened his intelligence 
in a manner almost palpable, giving him the necessary 
force for the execution of his project. He states that 
in his Discovery, the sciences and mathematics were 
of but little use to him, and that it was from God 
alone he received the idea, as well as the resolution, 
which were crowned with success." 

De Lorgues has explained what he meant by the 
Redeem^er, "the word made flesh"— the flesh of Colum- 
bus; and to be accurate the Holy Trinity that Colum- 
bus speaks of is the Holy Spirit (Espirito Santo), the 
sacred scriptures (Sacra Escritura), and the sover- 
eigns, "Your Highnesses" (Vuestras Altezas) ; and if 
Columbus had possessed no fear of the Inquisition we 
may feel certain that he would not have been com- 
pelled to employ in his work a "double sense" that 



44 



sometimes too plainly evinced his thought, and may- 
account for the missing pages — either torn out by a 
friendly critic, or abstracted by a vigilant ecclesiast 
at a later period. 

All writing intended to maintain or propagate Jew- 
ish doctrine, which circulated in Spain for a consid- 
erable time previous to and during the 15th century, 
had to be written in an enigmatical or double sense; 
so that it might appear to be Christian on the surface 
and yet be susceptible of conveying quite a different 
idea to the observant Hebrew reader. This even ap- 
plied to correspondence, says Adolfo de Castro, ''Those 
Jews who lived in concealment in Spain, when writing 
to their brethren in foreign kingdoms accounts of the 
persecutions and other punishments to which the Holy 
Office rendered them obnoxious, were obliged to be 
extremely guarded in the expressions they used." In- 
quisitor General Diego de Deza, Bishop of Palencia, in 
his alertness to discover Hebraisms in manuscript and 
published literature, went to the extreme of denouncing 
any attempt to improve the rendering of the Vulgate 
from the Hebrew and Greek texts, ordering all copies 
of the Holy Scriptures in these languages, wherever 
and whenever found to be burnt; as he regarded all 
new translations and notes on the Scriptures, such as 
those produced by the laborious Antonio de Lebrija, 
as the work of Jews, who were thus to be detected and 
arrested. "Give me a Jew," he was accustomed to 
say, "and I will return him to thee burnt !" 



45 

The manuscripts of Lebrija, containing notes on 
the Holy Scriptures, were by his orders seized and 
subjected to the flames, which so incensed their author 
that he addressed the Bishop in a burst of indignation 
interpreted to be an admission of his Jewish leaning, 
and which resulted in his execution : "What, then," he 
says, **it does not suffice for me to enslave my own 
understanding in compliance with the faith, respect- 
ing the dogmas it proposes to me, but I am moreover 
bound to confess myself ignorant with regard to cer- 
tain truths, which I know, not on grounds either 
dubious or supported only by probable reasons, but 
resulting from irrefragible arguments and palpable 
demonstrations! What slavery is this, which under 
the title of piety does not permit me to manifest my 
way of thinking in matters by no means injurious to 
the faith? What ! did I say manifest ? Nay, that does 
not even allow me to write down my opinion for my 
own use and within the secrecy of the closet — not even 
to mutter it within my teeth, or make it the subject 
of my meditations !" 

Other learned men besides Lebrija, who were im- 
prisoned or executed because of attempting to correct 
errors in the Vulgate, or for similar slips in literature, 
were Alfonso de Zamora, Professor of Hebrew in the 
University of Alcala ; the Augustine friar Luis de Leon, 
Professor in the University of Salamanca, who passed 
five years in a dungeon ; another Salamanca professor, 
Martin Martinez Cantalapiedra, of the chair of He- 



46 



brew, who in addition to imprisonment was forced to 
have his forehead stained with the dye used in printing 
his works; the Augustine friar Alonzo Gudiel, who 
perished within the walls of the Holy Office; Caspar 
de Grajar, Abbot of Santiago de Penalba of the 
Cathedral of Astorga, whose days were ended in 
prison ; the Jesuit Father Mariana, the historian, who 
was no friend of the Jews, yet who, as Llorente informs 
us, was for a long time immured on suspicion in the 
prisons of the Inquisition; and finally Father Jose 
Siguenza, biographer of Saint Jerome, who in that 
work says of the Inquisitors : "On discovering that per- 
sons knew two letters of the Hebrew language, they 
suspect them of Judaism !" For this he was sentenced 
to a year's imprisonment in the dungeons at Toledo. 

Circumspect indeed had any one to be with courage 
enough to publish a book in Spain at that period hav- 
ing the slightest reference to Judaism; it must be 
made to appear as a Christian work, or its author 
might expect the direct penalties. Various methods 
were adopted to convey to the reader the idea that a 
hidden meaning was intended, as by citing authors 
who advocated symbolic writing, by quoting from them, 
and by direct methods ; and some of these are well il- 
lustrated in "Libro de las Profecias." 

The first draft of this work was evidently an argu- 
mentative letter to the Sovereigns which should se- 
cure their authorization for him to equip another fleet. 



47 

and also arouse them to the importance of retrieving 
the Holy Land. This paper was criticised by a friendly 
friar, Caspar Goricio, having been completed in March, 
1502 ; and in the following February, Columbus wrote 
his last letter to the Pope. The introduction suggests 
the double sense in which such records are to be inter- 
preted. The heading is : 

"The Most Exalted Message in Uttered Speech," 
(In Summa Angelica sub dicto Expositio.) 
and he begins by saying : 

"Sacred scriptures are to be comprehended in four 
ways: first, by following history (historiam) ; history 
is the narration by the historian of a thing done which 
he sees or knows; because among the ancients no one 
wrote history unless he was a part of it. 

Second, allegorically (allegorice), from leon, which 
is otherwise, and gore, which is to speak or speaking; 
and is when from one circumstance it is permitted to 
perceive another which is to be believed. 

Third, metaphorically (tropologice) , from tropos, 
which is turning over, and logos, which is speech ; and 
occurs when it is perceived that a deed performed is 
to be confessed. 

Fourth, in a mystical sense (anagogice), from ana 
which is rising, and goge which is leading away from ; 



48 



and applies when through one act, a desired thing is 
perceived, a manifest glory. 

In this John Gersen is an authority: "The letter 
teaches the deed; which you should believe alleg- 
orically; practice morally; entertain mystically." 

In this is the Reasonableness of Divine Aid. 

The four meanings in the sacred scriptures plainly 
intimated in this utterance: 

1. (Historically) Jerusalem, for it stands for that 
earthly kingdom which wanderers seek. 

2. Allegory — signifying the church militant. 

3. Tropology — signifying, if you please, a faithful 
soul. 

4. "Anagogice" — signifying the heavenly Jerusalem, 
or fatherland (patriam) or kingdom of heaven." 

The above is the literal beginning of the ''Prophe- 
cies," and he who does not see the Jewish intent and 
purpose must be very blind indeed. Then follows a 

''Prayer for Inspiration. 

**God, who teacheth the hearts of men without the 
din of words, and without labor, and who giveth skill 



49 



to the tongues of stammerers, and who approacheth 
quickly in every seasonable time, mayst thou perceive 
the concept in our mind and be gracious to our desire. 
In proportion as we are ignorant of letters let thy 
power enter in ; because happy is the man whom thou 
instructs, Lord and teacheth in thy law. Grant there- 
fore we beseech, that in this we may perceive the ser- 
mons, books and prophecies from thee, written from 
the place of thy Holy Spirit. Amen." 

At this point a caution is introduced to the effect that 
a certain period is to be thrown forward. From his 
Jewish point of view the Messianic advent is to be ad- 
vanced from the Christian era to the time of Colum- 
bus. As he says : 

"It should be noted that in the Sacred Scriptures, 
sometimes one period of time is to be taken for an- 
other time, as the past for the future : 

"All things whatsoever I have heard from my 
Father, I make known to you. Whence the blessed 
Augustine in a certain sermon read by certain ones in 
the festival of the holy saint Thomas, says : 

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, said himself to have done 
what He would do, who did those things which will be 
done; since indeed He spake as a prophet. He did not 
say they have pierced my hands and feet ; but they are 
to be pierced, speaking as of the past, and yet proph- 



50 



ecying of things to occur in the future, and so in this 
place he says himself to have made known to his dis- 
ciples, all things which He knew himself would be done 
in the fulness of knowledge, etc., or which would be 
inquired after, if it pleases you/* 

That Columbus regarded himself as the persecuted 
one — whose hands and feet symbolically had been 
pierced — is apparent from the number of time he re- 
fers to this passage, as in the next citation : 

"When also the blessed Isydorus in his book con- 
cerning the Highest Good, says: 

'There is a sign of the times by which certain things 
are told as done which are to be done, and it is this : 
'They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have 
counted all my bones, and have divided my raiment 
among themselves, and similar to these. But why were 
the things hitherto confessed, already narrated as 
done? Because the things which will be to us, with 
God have already happened from all Eternity, as well 
as other things which follow and precede, through the 
whole." 

Another authority as to the double sense is now 
cited : 

**In the language of Nicholas de Lyra concerning 
Daniel, in Chapter 8 : 



51 

"It may be noted as evidence in the following letter, 
that the meaning in the sacred scripture is sometimes 
in a double sense because those things which are done 
in the Old Testament are type of those which are done 
in the New, as the apostle says in First Corinthians, 
Chapter 10, All things in their types touch upon these. 
In this idea, when in the Old Testament something is 
predicted to be fulfilled in other persons of the Old 
Testament, yet is it more truly and perfectly in others 
of the New Testament, then is there a double sense of 
the letter; one is less important and the other more 
important, and thus it is evident that in the more per- 
fect is the prediction of the word fulfilled. By the 
grace of words First Chronicles, XXII says : 'I will be 
to him as a father, and he shall be to me as a son; 
which is the word of the Lord speaking.' " 

It will be noted that in the remainder of the citation 
from De Lyra, Solomon is conceived as the Son of God 
or first Messiah, the implication being at this point 
and later on, that as the discoverer of Paradise and 
of the riches of Solomon, Columbus must be taken as 
the last ; and the Admiral's view was quite in accord 
with that of the great Jewish teacher Maimonides, in 
his earlier "Siraj" and in his legal code the "Mishneh 
Torah," that the Messiah will be wiser than Solomon, 
and as great a prophet as Moses, and that Israel will 
through him regain the sovereignty over Palestine. 

"Solomon, who was the son of God by adoption in 
his chief kingdom, because of what is said by our be- 



52 

loved Lord, as shown in First Kings, Chap. V, 12: 
And so the word is fulfilled to the letter in Solomon, it 
is more perfectly fulfilled in Christ who is the son of 
God by nature whose type Solomon was; and so the 
authority is perceived to the letter of Solomon and of 
Christ — of Solomon as less important and of Christ as 
more important. 

"Thus the Apostle to the Hebrews alleges the pre- 
dicted authority also spoken to the letter. Thus as 
in this proposition, under the similitude of a ram and 
of a goat Daniel introduces the battles of the Greeks 
and of the Medes ; his chief purpose being to introduce 
the battles of Antichrist, or of its members and of the 
Christians, and thus is there a double sense of the 
letter, as shown from the predictions, etc." 

The reference to Antichrist suggests the Jewish 
sense in which the above is to be taken. Then comes 
the letter in which is reviewed the greatness of his 
discoveries, with compliments to the Sovereigns for 
their assistance, the influence of the Holy Spirit, the 
need of regaining the Holy Sepulchre, the nearness of 
the end of the world — proven by quotations and compu- 
tations — in which occur the following: 

"Who can doubt that it has been the light of the 
Holy Spirit, in this manner as from me, whose rays 
of wonderful brightness strengthened by your holy and 
sacred scriptures, and yourselves, very exalted and 



1 



53 

renowned, with the forty-four books of the Old Testa- 
ment, the four Evangelists and twenty-three epistles of 
those blessed apostles— I being thus guided following 
without a moment's cessation — has rewarded me with 
this grand result?" 

"Joachim of Fiori, a Calabrian, has said there would 
proceed from Spain, one who would rebuild the Temple 
of Mount Zion." 

This reference to Joachim is interesting from the 
fact that Joachim's writings convey the idea that 
Christianity is a failure — "merely an intermediate con- 
dition, to be further developed,"* and thus "Joachim" 
is well calculated to support the Admiral's contention 
that he himself was the culmination of that develop- 
ment! 

As support of the same sort he introduces portions 
of the "Messiah" of Rabbi Samuel Ibn Abbas, purport- 
ing to be 

"An Epistle translated from the Arabic into Ro- 
mance (Spanish), sent by Rabbi Samuel de Israel, 
born in the city of Fez, to Master Isaac of the Syna- 
gogue of Morocco, the members of whom have become 
good and faithful Christians/' 

This last clause had an important influence toward 
securing the book's circulation ; it really being a work 

*Lea's History. 



54 



while ostensibly bewailing Jewish misfortunes, fearing 
lest God is destroying the "sons of the patriarch Jacob" 
for not adopting Christianity, seems to be intended by 
its wealth of prophetic quotations and its peculiar ref- 
erences — some of them apparently requiring a key to 
locate — and its unusual parentheses, to at least keep 
alive Jewish doctrines in the minds of its readers. 

The extremest care had to be taken with works re- 
ferring to the Messiah, as the first direction or test for 
determining the apostasy of New Christians, given 
out by the Holy Office, was : 

"When a Jew who has been baptized, expects the 
Messiah, or says he has not come!" 

The only way in which a treatise on the Messiah 
could safely circulate, was as an argument that he had 
already appeared in the person of Christ, which this 
work in its title and some other ways purports to 
make, but has an esoteric sense quite the opposite of 
what appears on the surface, so that regarding its com- 
prehension, as expressed in a passage in the first chap- 
ter : "They sought me who inquired for me, and those 
who sought me, found me." Columbus incorporates 
three chapters of this matter in his own work. 

Then come passages from Augustine, in which 
divinations and various prophetic quotations occur, 
as from the second Psalm: "Dominus dixit ad me; 



55 



iilius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te ; postula a me, et 
dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam, et possessionem 
tuam terminos terre" — a passage apparently having 
much attractiveness for Columbus. 

From this point on no careful reader can fail to 
see his drift or meaning, made up as it is largely of 
quotations from the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms, 
with discussions of Antichrist and the end of the world. 
That the Psalmists were referring to Jesus, no Jew 
believed, but on the contrary every Hebrew had faith 
that according to the Psalms the true Christ would be 
a victorious king whose campaigns should be success- 
ful everywhere in the earth. Hence the cogency with 
which Columbus quotes such passages as Psalms XIV, 
7; LXXII, 9; and CX, 6 and 7. 

Then classic authors referring to Antichrist, and 
to the end of the world, such as the Sibylline utterance 
from Seneca's tragedy of ''Media," are presented ; and 
finally a great number of passages chiefly from the 
Old Testament, referring to islands of the sea, the 
treasures of the Orient, and the gold and silver of 
Tarsus and of Ophir — his own partly realized, and in 
a vastly greater degree, anticipated discoveries. One 
passage from the XIX Psalm, occurs no less than eleven 
times : "Their line has gone out through all the earth, 
and their words to the end of the world." 

The "Prophecy," despite the restraints under which 
it was evidently composed, when the idea of its author 



56 



is grasped, does not appear as an inconsistent work. 
For scholarship and style it compares favorably with 
other books of its class ; and had the divine mission of 
its author been recognized as he conceived it, the *'Li- 
bro de las Profecias" would doubtless possess a high 
rank today among other sacred books. 

His Seal, 

Finally, there is to be considered that mysterious 
initial cypher, or seal of his, which Columbus never 
explained, a circumstance in itself contradicting the 
usual explanation of it as a fervid Christian eulogium. 
The fact that he enjoined the use of this seal 

S 
S A S 
X M Y 

Xpo — Ferens 

upon his heirs, just as he did the recovery of the Holy 
Sepulchre, shows that it must have had beyond any 
question or doubt in his mind a significance of his own 
peculiar personality and mission. According to Har- 
risse, he began to use this seal as early as 1494. 

Spotorno interpreted these letters as standing for: 
Xristus Sancta Maria Yosephus ; or Salva me Xristus, 
Maria Yosephus. 



57 

Ceradini gave the meaning as : "Savonensis suarum 
altitudinum servus dec. mil. Insulas Cristo ferens," a 
mere argument for his birthplace with no bearing on 
his life-mission. 

Reille explained the seal as : ''Servidor de sus Altezas 
Sacras Jesus Maria, Josephus, Potatore di Cristo." 

Ruge regarded it as "a useless bit of pedantry"; 
while Lombroso seemed to think it but a mere indica- 
tion of insanity. 

Conceiving himself, not as Servidor, but following 
the ancient Jewish doctrine that "a lion is Christ and a 
lion is the Antichrist; King is Christ and King is the 
Antichrist," and that the true Christ must vanquish 
the Antichrist, as the discoverer of Paradise and Mes- 
siah to rescue his race from the persecutions of Anti- 
christ, the words for which these letters stand — never 
revealed for obvious reasons^ — ^must have been in his 
mind about as follows: Salvador, salvans de Ante- 
cristo Salvador, Cristo de Moises y Yavah — Xpo-f erens, 
referring not to another Messiah, but to himself — 
possibly in view of his misfortunes meaning merely 
cruciferens— cross-bearer. And here is suggested the 
true reason impelling him to change his name. An- 
other ancient doctrine derived from various Jewish 
sources declares "the Messiah will come as a dove"; 
and when this Hebrew sailor was imbued with the de- 



58 

termination to discover Paradise, conceiving himself 
as the "begotten son" Cristoval Colon, became ''the 
Christ-bearer dove" — Christopher Columbus. 

Justice Due His Memory. 

Before the stress of social and physical forces 
warped his mind, Columbus was a typical human being, 
with all the hopes and fears of the average mortal, 
and similarly the product of the conditions under which 
he was born and reared. With a penchant for adven- 
ture and navigation, he probably told his son the truth, 
"that his ancestors and himself had always traded at 
sea." With more than ordinary vitality, self-educated, 
and early forced into a strenuous course, in an age 
when human rights were made to depend largely 
upon prejudice, and when to avow one's real senti- 
ments might mean death, a passage in the sacred books 
of his ancestors, if we may believe his own words, led 
him to conceive a great idea; and though it was in 
considerable degree a mistaken one, he deserves the 
highest credit for making it practical. For, although 
he conceived the earth only about one-third as large as 
it really is, thus locating "Paradise" in the Caribbean 
region, his achievement ushered in the practical dem- 
onstration of the true character of our planet — chang- 
ing it from a flat earth into a globe. 



1 



59 



"No serious writer/* says Professor Henry Wood, 
"has ever questioned Columbus' religious sincerity. We 
may call it fanaticism, but is that any gain ? The first 
man who believed in America enough to go and find 
it in the way Columbus did, ought to be permitted by 
Americans to believe anything else he chooses." Which 
is all very true, but as unfortunately along with others 
of his persuasion, he was not permitted during his 
life-time to openly express his real sentiments, the 
American people should in justice to his memory make 
what amends they can, even at this late day, by recog- 
nizing and attributing to him what he really did be- 
lieve. In justice to the great Admiral his views should 
be known, and there is a recognized addition to the 
achievements of a peculiarly gifted people in their 
determination ; since his energetic, avaricious, and per- 
severing nature, and the devious character of his con- 
duct and entire career, including the mysteries of his 
life wherein it appears that he deliberately sought to 
deceive in regard to the date and place of his birth ; to 
make it appear that he was a native of one country, 
when he could only speak and write the language of 
another ; and sought to represent that he was a devout 
Catholic and working for the interests of the Chris- 
tian Church, when it was dangerous to entertain other 
sentiments — though as a careful examination shows he 
was working for quite a different end — all are best 



60 



explained, in fact can only be fully explained, on the 
hypothesis that he was of Jewish lineage, and a He- 
brew at heart. 



i 



I 



61 



Note 1. 



That Columbus had the form and features of a Jew 
may be inferred from his son Ferdinand's description, 
who says : "He was tall, well-formed, muscular, and of 
an elevated and dignified demeanor. His visage was 
long, neither full nor meager ; his complexion fair and 
freckled, and inclined to ruddy; his nose aquiline, his 
cheek bones were rather high, his eyes light gray, and 
apt to enkindle; his whole countenance had an air of 
authority. His hair in his youthful days, was of a 
light color, but care and trouble, according to Las 
Casas, soon turned it gray, and at thirty years of age 
it was quite white." 

Note 2. 

The references of Columbus to Messianic passages, 
are largely through quotations, as to have made any 
considerable number of them directly would have been 
an open challenge to the Inquisitors. 

Note 3. 



Dr. Alexander Kohut, in an article on "Columbus in 
i| Hebrew Literature," in "The Menorah" for December, 

I 1892, after referring to reproductions of contemporan- 

eous writings such as from Meor Enayim, that "the 
new world is identical with the land of Ophir, whither 
Solomon despatched his vessels once in three years, as 
it is recorded in Kings I, 9, says: "This simple in- 
stance is an evidence of the ever alert and increasing 
interest manifested by the Jews for historical matters, 
and furthermore it is a sign of the awakening of the 
Jewish mind to the now apparent truth, that to Colum- 
bus, the Messiah of the exiled Jews in Spain, our race 



\ 



6 ?912 



62 



owes a debt which can only be repaid by loyalty to his 
memory and the cherishment and encouragement of 
such ideals which graced the life of a world's neglected 
hero." 


























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